LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




0000140fl203 



• 



HfrVKWH HRHtWM 




► * A * 






- ° " ° * o ■& .^' & » "^ .(To ° " ° * <3 



i>-** 

^ *« 




^ v"*"" \^0^^ *+±r$ or^^MX- ^ «"k 



C5K 



,0 ^ 



o 




'^cv 
















o 

o V 
i0^ 





,V „ N e ^ A % 




0° ^ 

^0 'V " o N 











r oK 



^ ^. 




^5 ^ 



°o 








■■■1^ 



A * v ^- 




.4.' 




"W 



S V 

A G °£# * • • 

• ^c5^v ^* O 




V- ***** 

' A G ^ 

o V 








0* *o 



<\ 





? 





'/ ** ^ °°;^w ; ^ Su \ %^^K ; ** v "\ "°^^^ : ^^ 



. v"^ **£, <£ 




• ^ A*° 



A 






\* %^ av *fK\s^A ^o cy * 



.*> 






cy s ♦ • a "^ 



A 



4 



o 



* 



4 



ADDRESS 



INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS 



DELIVERED TO THE 



TEACHERS OF THE SCHOOLS, 



NOVEMBER 13th, 1868, 



By C. L. BRACE, 



SECBETABY OF THIE CHILDBEU'S J^TJD SOCIETY. 



NEW YORK: 

PRESS OF WYNKOOP & HALLENBECK, 

No. 113 Fulton Street. 

1868. 



~T~6S- 



ADDRESS 



ON 



INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS, 



DELIVERED TO 



THE TEACHERS OF THE SCHOOLS, 

NOVEMBER 13, 1868, 

BY 

SECRETARY OF THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY. 



Ladies — The eloquent historian of the Dutch Republic quotes 
from Count John of Nassau, the brother of William the Silent, 
the following remarkable words, spoken to his sons and nephews 
before even the first Dutch or English emigrant landed on the 
shores of New England or New York: 

" You must urge," he says, " on the States General that they, accord- 
ing to the example of the Pope and the Jesuits, should establish free 
schools, where children of quality, as well as of poor families, for a small 
sum, could be well and Christianly educated and brought up. This 
would be the greatest and most useful work, and the highest service 
that you could ever accomplish for God and Christianity, and especially 
for the Netherlands themselves. * * * Soldiers and patriots thus 
educated, with a true knowledge of God and a Christian conscience — 
item, churches and schools, good libraries, books, and printing presses — 
are better than all armies, arsenals, armories, munitions, alliances, and 
treaties than can be had or imagined in the world." (Motley's United 
Netherlands, vol. iii. p. 119.) 

From the Dutch common schools, that were thus the best 
defense and foundation of the Dutch Republic, nearly three cen- 



turies since, sprang, later, the New England free schools, trans- 
planted by the Pilgrim Fathers from Ley den to Massachusetts, 
and, still mroe, the whole system of popular schools in America, 
which we all agree are a better defense and basis for our Repub- 
lic than all " armies, arsenals, armories, treaties, and alliances 
that can be had or imagined in the world." 

You, ladies, are engaged in a humble but useful branch of 
this most important public work — the teaching of the children of 
the poor, who are unable, from various causes, to attend our 
excellent public schools. 

It is a work little known of men, and bringing few of the 
rewards of life, still a most profound and earnest effort. 

The " Industrial School" is a well-worn name, but how 
much does it describe ! It means a light set in the dark places 
of a crowded city ; an agency of order and industry amid the 
idle and vagabond ; an instrumentality of kindness and morality 
amid the neglected and vicious ; a means whereby Christianity 
can reach down its hand of love to the outcasts of society. 

As I think of these little nuclei of industry and brotherly 
kindness — these schools, scattered about wherever there is pov- 
erty, or crime, or suffering — each exerting its patient influences of 
goodness, year after year, among the indifferent or the hostile ; 
improving, month by month, the children of misfortune ; teaching 
order and self-restraint; supplying bread , to the hungry mouth, 
clothes to the naked, work to the idle, and education to the igno- 
rant ; redeeming the usual injurious effects of charity, by making 
the first object the improvement or renovation of character, and 
not the bestowal of alms ; bearing with ignorance, ingratitude, 
and vice ; never despairing ; seeking out, not the fortunate and 
well-off, but sweeping each Ward for its human dregs ; wherever 
finding a child impoverished or neglected or exposed to tempta- 
tion, or ignorant and needy, there opening its sheltering arms of 
mercy— a friend to the friendless, a teacher to the heathen of our 
city, a humble manifestation, in its tone and objects, of the Spirit 
of Christ — when I think of all this, included in the words Indus- 
trial Schools, I feel an emotion of thankfulness that there are 
such seeds of good planted here and there among the dark dwell- 
ings of wickedness in our city. And you yourselves are fortunate 
in being agents in a work so humane and Christian. 



at 

NEW YORK PUBL. LlBR. 

IN EXCHANO*. 



There is an evil among the daughters of the poor which 
almost overtops every other evil — the curse of the lowest class. 
You know it, without my mentioning its name. You know, too 
well, how these bright little girls who are playing about the 
docks, or selling their wares at the doors of hotels and business 
offices, or begging at kitchen-entrances, or peddling, or sweep- 
ing the streets, must grow up to womanhood. You know that, 
in their crowded cellars, or among their bold street company , they 
soon lose even a consciousness of the line dividing purity from 
vice. They undoubtedly inherit tendencies to indulgence ; they 
seldom see examples of purity; they are not taught to labor; they 
have the irrepressible desire of youth for amusement ; they natu- 
rally love gay dress ; so that they are mentally and morally led 
astray before they have even passed from girlhood. No romance 
attends their fall; no deception or betrayal hastens their ruin. 
They grow up naturally, and almost inevitably, to a life of dis- 
honor. They have had no friend to guide, no example to inspire, 
no warning voice to deter. They are lost to shame and virtue 
even as they enter womanhood; and when once plunged in their 
wild life of shameful pleasure, how seldom can human hand save ! 
Nature revenges herself fearfully. She who has sold, for dis- 
graceful wages, what is above all price, finds herself, if she would 
reform, without a place at the great table of nature. " To work 
unable, and to beg ashamed," she must starve, or continue the 
now horrible livelihood. The end many of you know too well — 
under the drunkard's cup, or, still in early youth, in the dreadful 
wards of the outcasts' hospital. 

This terrible evil you, beyond all other agencies in the city, 
tend to prevent, and in the most quiet, modest, and thorough way. 
You take the bright little girl, full of life and hope as any of our 
own children, and you train her to regular industry. From you 
she learns the best lesson of practical life — the Lesson of Labor. 
Day by day she acquires, under your influence, habits of order, and 
cleanliness, and punctuality. The discipline of the school teaches 
her self-restraint. In the skillful use of the needle, or working 
the sewing-machine, or some other industrial art, she gains an 
honest means of support when all others fail, and the power of 
keeping herself, or those dependent on her, neat and tidy. In 
the daily words of moral teaching, in the simple worship, in pas- 



sages occasionally learned from the teachings of the Saviour, she 
receives, without being aware of it, an idea of Duty and Religion, 
and feels that, though poor and unfortunate, there is One above 
whom she can please, and for whom she should live. 

Especially, from the labors of the volunteer teachers, who 
have given up so much to help her, there dawns upon her soul 
the idea of Self-sacrifice, and from their unconscious influence, as 
well as that of the daily teachers, comes an ideal of purity and 
refinement which never afterward leaves the mind of the child 
of poverty. 

Thus it happens that the poorest class of children in the Indus- 
trial Schools are placed, gradually, beyond the reach of their 
strongest temptations. A celebrated jurist, in England, a few 
years ago, said, in what proved to be his last words : " The great 
want in England is sympathy— sympathy between the highest 
and lowest classes." No one who has not known the poor can 
tell what a difference it makes in the destiny of a degraded family 
to feel that some other human beings, of decency and character, 
have an interest in them. These poor little girls, among the 
lowest slums of the city, grow up with the feeling of being the 
rovers and marauders of society. No one cares for them, and 
they care for no one. The police have called them "street rats ;" 
they are like vermin to the people above them. 

The Industrial School supplies the link of sympathy. Each 
roving, begging child knows that there are human beings above 
her who care for her welfare and would gladly see her better. 
Phe is no longer alone in the crowded city, to gnaw at the founda- 
tions of society and to plunder from its refuse, like the street 
rats. The good and the fortunate feel for her. The incident you 
all meet so often, of children running away ashamed when caught 
begging, or in bad company, shows this new feeling in their minds. 

Such children, after a few years in these schools, can not fol- 
low courses of shame for a livelihood. They have become steady, 
tidy, industrious, respectable young girls, with ideas of purity and 
refinement, feeling that they belong to the great world of honest 
and decent people, and often presenting lives truly reformed by 
religious truth. We accordingly find, after fifteen years of expe- 
rience, that not two in a thousand who leave these schools ever 
adopt a criminal course of life. 



And think for a moment what these children have had for 
homes and surroundings ! You who have taught in the Fourth 
Ward, among the dance-houses and rum shops ; you who have so 
often been through the slums and Italian dens of the Five Points ; 
you who have labored amoog the sailors' boarding-houses and 
rookeries of the First Ward ; you who have patiently wrought 
through the poverty-stricken cellars and bare garrets near St. 
John's park; you who have gathered in the outcasts of " Rotten 
Row," and visited, for so many years, among the dens of misery 
near Cottage place ; you who have worked so patiently and so 
long through the shanties of Dutch hill, or the " poverty row" of 
the Ninth avenue, or the rag-pickers' quarters of the German 
Wards, or the crowded tenement-houses of Corlear's Hook and 
Cherry and Water streets — you know, too well, what are the 
homes of laro-e numbers of these children. You know what 
miserable underground cellars, what packed garrets, what wretch- 
ed shanties they inhabit ; how drunkenness and lewdness sur- 
round them ; how the examples they daily see are of dishonesty, 
brutality, and vice ; how strong are the temptations which con- 
tinually beset them. And yet, with all this, you have probably 
noted the most remarkable fact that so few of these poor children 
from the schools ever grow up to be women of shameful lives. 
This, at least, is one most cheering fruit of your work. 

Another most important influence of these Schools is in 
preventing drunkenness. Despite the numerous instances we meet 
of drunken women and of girls given to intoxication, I do not 
believe the appetite for alcoholic stimulus is as strong with the 
female temperament as the male. When we hear, moreover, 
from those laboring to improve the poor, instances of '' children 
in a state of intoxication," we may be sure that these are excep- 
tional facts, stated in a general form to produce a stronger 
impression. Some children are drugged with alcohol by wicked 
parents, or they are petted with " sips" of liquor, and may thus 
acquire a taste for it. Others, perhaps, inherit an appetite for 
strong drink; but, as a general thing in childhood, the taste for 
alcohol is not a natural one. It comes later. 

I am persuaded that the greatest of ail temperance influences 
on the lowest class is, the gratifying their desire for amusement 
in a healthy way, and the elevating them above the habit of low 



6 

tastes and gratifications. With those who have fallen into habits 
of intoxication, there is nothing to check but a total abstinence 
pledge, confirmed by social influences or by a religious vow. 

It has often struck us all with gratitude how these Industrial 
School girls — many the children of drunkards, and often tasting 
alcoholic liquors — never grow up as drunkards. Even some who 
had began to indulge in the habit, do not become drunken 
women. Perhaps the memories of their horrible homes and the 
scenes of their childhood, keep them from the reach of this curse. 
But, against that, is the tremendous influence of such early exam- 
ples, and the degrading effect of such homes. No ; the true rea- 
son must be, that in your schools, under the gentle influence of 
volunteer teachers and your own, they gradually acquire habits 
and tastes above the low vices of their mothers ; and they 
grow out of drunkenness just as they grow out of filth and the 
habit of begging. The new circles which they enter — that of 
decent, honest working girls — give them a social tone which keeps 
them from low appetites. 

It is certainly not the least cheering of the many rewards 
for your faithful labors, that the horrible sweep of the vice of 
Intoxication, desolating so many hundreds of thousands of house- 
holds, is thus quietly and naturally held in check, and so many 
thousands of future wives and mothers are thus saved from ruin. 

The effect, too, in regard to other crimes and offenses, such as 
petty thieving and vagrancy, is equally happy. Who ever hears 
of an Industrial School girl, or one who has been such, as a thief 
or a vagrant? The very prison records are your certificates. 
The tables of criminal statistics give an arithmetical proof of 
your patient labors of love. With a population, increasing, 
probably, at the rate of five per cent, each year, and an influx of 
masses of poor foreigners, crime among little girls and women 
has not only not increased with population, but has absolutely 
decreased. 

If we go back seven years and compare the returns of police 
arrests of 1860 with those of 1867, during which our population 
probably increased one-third, we shall find the arrests of female 
vagrants less, being 1,730 in 1867 against 1,745 in 1860; of pick- 
pockets, only 8 more, 67 against 59. If we look at 1862, since 
which date our population has grown, perhaps, 25 per cent., we 



find the female thieves have decreased from 1,381 to 1,199, and 
the number of young girls, between 1 and 20, arrested, has 
fallen off from 3,142 to 2,924. 

If we take the tables of imprisonments in the city prisons, 
the results are equally encouraging. 

If we compare 1867 with 1861, the tables of which I happen 
to have, we find the number of female vagrants in prison fallen 
off from 3,172 in 1861, to 1,817 in 1867, and the cases of girls, in 
all our city prisons, under 10, from 373 to 289, and between 10 
and 20, from 2,454 to 2,305, though the natural growth would 
have been nearly 3,200. 

But it would be unjust to your labors to represent them as 
entirely for the criminal poor. Large numbers of your scholars 
are simply the children of honest, destitute widows, or of disabled 
and unfortunate working people, or of soldiers killed or maimed 
in the war, or are the offspring of drunkards, without any special 
exposure to crime, any further than poverty always offers it. 
These, under your faithful labors, grow up to be respectable 
domestics and factory girls. From the neatness and good habits 
they have learned, their tendency is continually to rise in the 
social scale. They become favored servants, or they enter trades ; 
as they marry, they are found to marry mechanics, and we know 
some three or four who have married men of fortune and educa- 
tion, and have filled their new positions very tastefully. 

One, I meet occasionally, in one of our schools, who calls, in 
her own carriage, to take the teacher to drive, as well-bred a lady 
as one can meet. I remember her, a ragged little creature, in a 
shanty on " Dutch hill." 

Of another, who was a servant, I remember hearing the mis- 
tress remark on the extraordinary neatness of her appointments 
and habits, and the reply was, " She learned that in the Industrial 
School." 

Some few have become teachers and missionaries. 

It is found that what they have learned in the schools reacts 
on their wretched families. One of our teachers will remember 

Mrs. McK-- , an apparently confirmed drunkard, and at one 

time houseless, now a sober, respectable woman, through the 

influence of her children ; and the father of another, D. W , 

who was a brutal drunkard, beating wife and children, now 



8 

apparently reformed, amid the tears and grateful prayers of his 
wife. And our faithful teacher in the Fourteenth Ward will not 
soon forget the occurrence of one of her children, set upon the 
counter in a liquor shop by a drunken father, and singing that 
most touching song, " Father, come home !" till even the hardened 
carousers went forth, touched and ashamed. 

Who can estimate the effect of these beautiful songs of purity 
and love, sung by the little ones in the homes of poverty, and 
among the dens of crime ! I might multiply such instances by 
the score, but they are familiar to you. 

These little scholars become missionaries of cleanliness and 
apostles of decency in these wretched quarters. Many a home is 
reformed by them. Now and then a child in these schools is 
killed by accident, and the simple funeral may be celebrated by 
the schoolmates in their beloved school-room. White flowers are 
brought, purchased by the earnings of poverty, and the tears of 
the children of misfortune drop in sympathy over the coffin of the 
departed. 

Last winter, a child of the German school was at the point of 
death, and remembering the teaching in the last Sunday meeting 
connected with the school, which had been about having a "clean 
heart," she said : " I wish I could see Mr. and Mrs. Macy. Do 
tell them I hope I have a ' clean heart.' Let them say good-bye 
for me to the school, and tell them I pray that they may keep 
clean hearts too." 

To me nothing is more touching in the children of poverty 
than th.ir eagerness to learn. Those of us who, through the kind- 
ness of others, have always had all the opportunities we could 
desire to gain- knowledge, can hardly appreciate the passion for 
learning which sometimes fills the breast of a poor child. 

I never shall forget that street boy, in our office, who was 
asked by a stranger if he could read and write. "No, sir," was 
the answer. "But why don't you go to school, my boy?" said 
the gentleman, severely. The lad burst into tears, and said, * I 
don't believe God ever meant me to go to school. I've seen the rich 
boys goin', but I never could ; I've had to work." 

From our Park School (Sixty-eighth street, near Broadway) 
there is a girl working in a ribbon factory who has her book 
along side of the bobbin, and learns her lessons to recite at night. 



9 

Another girl, living in Eighty-third street, walks down each day 
to the silk factory in Thirty-sixth street, works from 7 o'clock in 
the morning till 6 in the evening, then, without going home, 
walks up to the school in Sixty-eighth street, and studies her les- 
sons as eagerly as if it were play. 

Still another, who could make fifty cents a night from extra 
work, gave it up to attend school. Of a bright little scholar a 
recent report relates as follows : 

" The girls at the ribbon factory had for overwork a task of thirty 
neck-ties to make. Many of the girls stayed away to accomplish it. 
Alice determined she would not. It would not do to neglect the work 
or she would be discharged. She was earning $4.50 a week, and was 
thus helping her mother, a widow. Neither could she give up the school ; 
so she went home and worked ten ties before school. She was in her 
place as usual. After school, at night, she worked ten more. In the 
morning she did ten more before 7 o'clock, and then went to her day's 
work to labor till 6 o'clock p.m." 

Such, ladies, are a few of the many fruits of your long labors 
of love among the children of the poor. I come now to more 
direct and practical matters. 

Your main object in these schools, is to exert a moral influ- 
ence. All things are subordinate to this. 

Your first great difficulty is in drawing the delicate line be- 
tween the necessary alleviation of poverty and the encourage- 
ment of pauperism and dependence. These schools are not, first 
of all, eleemosynary ; their principal purpose is not to give alms 
to the poor, but to prevent the poor from needing alms. The 
elevation of character and the improvement of mind are their 
objects. Help should be given to the destitute in such a way as 
to raise them soon above the need of help. Money should almost 
never be given ; and all gifts, as much as possible, be a reward 
for work. Even the clothes and shoes to the children must be 
made, so far as possible, prizes for good conduct and industry. 
The meals furnished are a part of the school machinery, and do 
not have the effect of mere alms. The spirit of pauperism is, 
above all, to be discouraged, and often the teacher will find it 
better to permit suffering than to encourage a habit of begging. 
Of course, many instances will occur where great destitution 
must be relieved, and immediately ; but that should be done in 
such a way as to force, for instance, an ignorant family to educate 



10 

their children, or as wages for even nominal work. Last winter, 
in a time of bitter want, a benevolent lady applied to us to know 
the best way to confer her benefactions without doing as much 
injury as good. We suggested purchasing material and having 
it made up into clothes for poor children, by the destitute wid- 
ows connected with our schools, whose condition we well knew. 
In a short time, hundreds of half-starved families were supplied 
with work and others with bread ; poor children were clothed, 
and no one encouraged in idleness or beggary. 

We have, it is true, but little means for charities, but what is 
supplied us, should be used in this way. To help judiciously, 
every teacher should be a missionary-visitor among these poor 
families, until she knows them well, and they have learned to 
respect and put confidence in her. 

The great sin of a lower class — especially of one engaged 
principally in domestic service — is Untruthfulness. You are to 
labor especially to cure this. A child who has honestly confessed 
a wrong-doing, should never be punished. You must praise and 
honor truth-speaking in every possible way. Bring instances 
and commands from the Bible: accustom the children to the 
thought that God watches them, and give them the desire of 
being " worthy of Christ," by thoroughly honorable lives. 
Compose stories and parables of your own, illustrating the noble- 
ness of truth and the disgrace and wrong of falsehood. When I 
heard, a few years ago, of a child of a common chore-woman, 
from our East River School, springing through the fire of a burn- 
ing steamer and rescuing the children of her employer at the 
risk of life, I felt that here was the fruit of teaching, and exam- 
ple of self-sacrifice in our Industrial Schools. But I hope also to 
hear of less striking, though equally noble instances of truthful- 
ness among these girls when servants in families. 

Another great fault of the class is, want of thoroughness. We 
see it in all our families. We find few of the domestics who 
have been taught the habit of thorough work. When the mistress 
is away, they slight their work. Let your girls be an exception. 
However little they learn, let them learn it thoroughly ; put up 
with no slovenly work, see that every one is exact and close, 
and in all manual labor get them into habits of the utmost thor- 
oughness. 



11 

The greatest defect of our scholars— one, indeed, that has led 
in part to the foundation of our schools — is their Unpunctuality . 
This is partly a necessary evil. Many of the children are em- 
ployed in street trades, or begging in the mornings, and can not 
he exact to the hour. But it is also a great fault of the poor 
themselves. They are lazy, and regardless of promptness ; many 
sleep late in the mornings. You must use many devices to break 
up this fault. I observe that the schools where there is the 
most interesting teaching, and where an object-lesson is given, 
or a story read early, have always punctual attendance. Some- 
times the teachers themselves err in this matter and set a bad 
example. It may be necessary in certain cases to give praises or 
honors, or even clothing, as a reward for punctuality. As many 
of your children come without breakfast, you will sometimes 
give food as an inducement for the early attendants. 

Cleanliness, of course, must be insisted upon, always ; and the 
bath and wash-basin be freely used. It will add much to the 
comfort of the school if the outside filthy garments be hung up 
in closets during school-hours, and large pinafores or even school- 
dresses be worn. 

The first matter, of course, in opening one of these Schools, is 
Discipline. Much tact must be used in securing this. You are 
not in the situation of an ordinary teacher, who can at once 
turn out an unruly scholar. It is the wicked children that you 
especially want to keep. You must be very firm, but at first 
wisely fail to see many things. You must expect to make little 
gains every day. Interest the scholars' minds as early as pos- 
sible. Arouse some of the most perverse and lazy by praise or 
confidence, if you can possibly give it. Our colored children 
are especially affected by praise and ridicule. Do not attempt 
severe punishments, as this class of children is perfectly accus- 
tomed to them. Expect in the beginning, from some, violence 
and abuse, but be patient, "patient to the end." 

Unfortunately, the best power of discipline is more a natural 
gift than acquired — a certain weight and force of temperament 
and character which naturally governs. 

INDUSTRIAL WORK. 

Your industrial branch is mainly sewing ; to this is added, 



12 

operating on the sewing machine, crocheting, and some orna- 
mental work; and with, the boys, carpentering and box-making. 

The girls should be taught to make their own dresses, and to 
keep them mended and tidy. It is difficult to carry on the 
sewing-classes without the help of volunteer teachers, but with 
two active teachers much may be done. 

Remember, one of the greatest benefits that you can confer on 
these girls, is the habit of industry. The needle has saved many 
a poor girl from ruin. 

If any teacher can suggest new branches of work, we shall 
gladly welcome them. According to our experience thus far, 
we can not carry on branches of industry with pecuniary profit, 
but we can give these children skill enough to enable them 
afterward to support themselves, or keep themselves tidy. 

TEACHING. 

It is of the utmost importance to the welfare of the School 
that there should be the best possible teaching. It is a mistake 
to suppose that " any teaching will do for a Primary School." 
Even to teach the alphabet well, requires an invention and skill 
that can rarely be found. Think of the vast gulf in the English 
tongue between the names and sounds of the letters, or between 
spelling and reading, which has to be bridged in the child's 
mind : think of the number of sounds to the same vowels or 
the same combination of letters, which can all be classified and 
simplified : remember what a difference there is in the reading 
even of educated people, and how few read with expression and 
nature — a talent which ought to be acquired early ; how much 
invention, too, can be shown in making the child remember and 
select words for spelling, and in analyzing the different sounds. 

In figures, too, how blank is a child's mind, and how steadily 
it can be taught to ascend from objects numbered to abstract 
figures, until it can be made to do what so few ladies accomplish 
successfully — cast up a column of figures correctly and make 
change quickly. For practical purposes, the obsolete tables of 
measure and quantity will be dropped, and questions be asked 
in such measures as are used now. In all this, incessant inven- 
tiveness must be employed. 

A child's mind grasps knowledge most of all through its 
senses and its imagination. A good teacher should keep these 



13 

continually in play. — She should educate, lead out, the faculties 
of the pupil. Moral truth must be taught through dramatic 
means — pictures and parables. Intellectual truth and knowledge 
must be conveyed as much as possible through the same medium. 
Geography should never be a dry science of topography — of 
place alone : it must connect itself with the physical peculiari- 
ties, the character of the surface, the plants and animals of each 
country. It should begin with the geography of the school- 
room and go on to that of the city and State : it should teach 
physical divisions before political, and, above all, should employ 
pictures and maps. 

Grammar, I do not believe, is a fit study for young children, 
but language and correct writing can be taught to the senses, by 
writing on the board sentences incorrectly in punctuation, 
spelling, and grammar, and then requiring the class to correct 
them. 

As the children grow older, writing becomes of great im- 
portance, and, especially, the art of writing and addressing a 
nice note or letter. The spelling in which they are always most 
deficient is in writing small words which are in common use. 
For these girls it is of the utmost importance that they should 
be able to read in a clear, expressive way, write neatly, and cast 
up accounts correctly. Whatever information they get beyond 
will serve to occupy their minds afterward, keep them from mis- 
chief, and elevate them in the world. For this general purpose, 
object-lessons, especially on natural objects, are of the utmost 
use ; teaching them to observe and to analyze, and filling their 
minds with useful knowledge. It is found that no one instruc- 
tion interests the children so much as these lessons, especially 
those on animals. 

An ingenious and interesting lesson is training them in nice 
distinctions of color, by a card prepared for the purpose. A 
classification of animals by pictures can be taught to very young 
children, and the uses and purposes of the organs and forms of 
different animals and plants. 

Dialogues and pieces of poetry committed to memory are 
also amusing to them and instructive. 

The memory of children can be exercised to an extraordinary 
degree. We have had schools where, with a leading word from 



14 

the teacher, one chapter after another of the Bible could be 
repeated by the scholars with perfect ^accuracy. This precious 
faculty of your scholars you should cultivate to the highest point. 
I need not dwell on the importance of music and simple songs 
in refining and elevating your scholars. 

In regard to religious instruction, we must leave that to the 
judgment of each teacher. The schools had better open with 
a few verses of Scripture and the Lord's Prayer, and close with a 
hymn. No sectarian teaching is admitted. Whatever is taught 
must be the simplest and most necessary truth. 

In all your efforts you are to remember that your time is 
extremely limited ; that your children must constantly leave you, 
either for the public schools or to labor for the support of their 
families. You. can not carry out as thorough a system of instruc- 
tion as in schools of a higher grade. Your object must be to do 
the most in a short time. Keep always in mind the distinctive 
peculiarities of the class, and adapt your teaching to these. 

In regard to hours, my own impression is that all children are 
kept too long in school. Your younger classes should generally 
be dismissed at two o'clock, and all should be allowed frequent 
changes of position and manual exercise. 

The great want in education every where are earnest, invent- 
ive, ingenious teachers. The tendency of the profession is to fall 
into routine, and make habit and rule take the place of invention 
and thought. The duty of every good teacher is to continually 
study how to resist this bias, and to make her profession a 
thoughtful and inventive art. For this object, it is of especial 
importance that our teachers should make use of all the educa- 
tional facilities they can obtain in this city. Last year they were 
kindly permitted to attend the invaluable lectures of Mr. Caul- 
kins, in the Saturday Normal School. These, perhaps, may still 
be open to them. I know teachers now in our corps, and those 
who have enjoyed the best previous training, who study every 
night the most effective mode of presenting their lessons the 
next day, though they be only spelling, or geography, or some 
" object-lesson." This is true teaching. 

But our teachers must remember that their duties do not end, 
as do those of the public school teacher, with teaching. We 
desire that each Industeial School should be a center of bene- 



15 

faction and moral influence to the neighboring quarter. Occa- 
sionally, kind friends supply means with which to provide work 
for the mothers of the children; or money is given to buy coal, 
and sell it to them at wholesale prices ; or a fair or festival can 
be arranged for the poor; or an opportune visit stimulates a 
mother to save her daughter, just being drawn into evil com- 
pany; or a dying woman can be consoled, or a vicious one advised 
and warned ; or a funeral of a child aided by the presence and 
help of the teacher. In fact, innumerable opportunities present 
themselves, to every one engaged in this work, to speak words of 
sympathy, or do deeds of kindness to the neglected and unfor- 
tunate. 

The most important matter for the health of the teachers and 
scholars is the 

VENTILATION 

of their school-rooms. Bad air is a continual poison to both, and, 
like many poisons, it becomes less repulsive the more frequently 
it is taken. The filthy clothes, and often unclean condition of 
the children, increase this bad condition of the atmosphere. It is 
a misfortune, too, of our small means, that we generally hire 
poor rooms for the schools, which are not easily susceptible of 
good ventilation. But each teacher can do much in opening 
windows, and in thoroughly airing the rooms in recess. 

The best plan of ventilation we have found to be that adopted 
in the hospitals during the war — the opening a hole in the wall, 
and carrying, through a pipe, a current of cold air to a metallic 
inclosure around the stove, where it is heated, and rises and 
warms the room with a freshened air, and finally escapes through 
a ventilator, or the windows, or an open chimney. Mr. E. Chad- 
wick, the great sanitary authority of England, speaks of this as 
the best of all simple methods of ventilation. 

Our lodging-houses we have ventilated by means of shafts to 
the roof, and thus have kept a wonderfully pure atmosphere in 
the sleeping-rooms. 

PROPER OBJECTS OF THE SCHOOLS. 

A few words should be said here in regard to the proper 
objects of this charity. Our design is to supplement the Public 
Schools. No child should be received who goes to any public or 



16 

private school, and only those who, from poverty or misconduct, 
or the neglect of parents, are entirely outside of the influence of 
our excellent system of public instruction. And as fast as is 
practicable, they should be forwarded to the Public Schools. 
But, with the best we can do, there will still be thousands never 
reached by our own or the Ward Schools. 

TRAINING SCHOOL FOR SERVANTS. 

We shall not feel that we have fairly completed our organiza- 
tion till at length we have met a great want — that of a Training 
School for Servants, where these young girls can be taught 
what they never know — the simplest matters of housekeeping, 
such as cooking a joint, making bread, sweeping, washing and 
ironing, bed-making, and the like. With such a school attached 
to our " Girls' Lodging-house," for instance, we could train up a 
new class of skilled domestics and fit hundreds of young girls, as 
they are not now, to make workingmen's homes happy and com- 
fortable. 

You know how long this idea has been contemplated with us. 
We only wait for means from the benevolent to carry it out. 

OUR ORGANIZATION. 

More than a year ago, Mr. J. W. Skinner was appointed, by 
our Board of Trustees, Special Superintendent of Schools. Under 
his judicious management, and through the generosity of friends, 
we have been enabled to greatly improve our organization. 
Larger school-rooms have been obtained, new and improved fur- 
niture added, an almost complete system of books and maps 
adopted, and more schools opened. 

One want which we very much deplore in our schools, is of 
sufficient libraries and musical instruments. A few possess good 
children's libraries, and the scholars value nothing so much as 
the little books which they carry to their homes, and read to 
their fathers and mothers. Some, too, have melodeons or pianos, 
and it will be easily imagined how acceptable, and how re- 
fining the music from them is to the children ; but, generally, 
the schools are poorly provided with these great necessities. 
What kind friends will help us to procure them ? 



17 

There are at the present time under the Children's Aid 
Society, twenty (20) of these Industrial Schools, with seven (7) 
night schools, having in attendance the last year the aggregate 
number of 5,927 children — mostly little girls, and an average 
daily attendance of 2,003, with 51 teachers. One school, at No. 
110 Centre street, is exclusively for Italian children — the little 
organ-grinders and boot-blacks of the city ; this contains about 
200. Another is solely for Germans, at No. 272 Second street, 
having 392 in attendance. Another for colored children at No. 
185 Spring street, has nearly 190. A new School and Lodging- 
house and free Reading-room were started last year, through the 
kind aid of friends, in the old Corlear's Hook quarter, at No. 327 
Rivington street. The school has some ninety children in attend- 
ance, and the Lodging-house shelters about eighty homeless boys 
each night. 

One of the most interesting of the schools is the "Park 
School," in Sixty-eighth street, near Broadway, with 320 pupils. 

The expense the past year for all these Schools was $29,940, 
of which sum $8,000 was for bread. 

We hope, during the present year, to still further extend this 
great work, if more means be supplied. We trust that the 
noble example of several ladies of fortune will be followed, and 
special Schools be endowed by them in destitute quarters. No 
more useful benefaction can be performed than the founding 
such a school. 

VOLUNTEERS. 

A most valuable feature of our work is the teaching of 
volunteers. 

These ladies have the self-denial to come for one afternoon in 
the week, and aid in raising these unfortunate children. Their 
labors these many years have had remarkable rewards. They 
especially serve to unite the rich and poor, the prosperous and 
unfortunate classes. Their example and teaching continually 
benefit the poor children. Their presence aids and encourages 
the teacher, and without them it is often very difficult to carry 
on the industrial branches. 

But we need more of them in our schools, and we trust we 
shall not appeal to the community in vain for their aid. 

2 



18 

Such, ladies, is the great work in which you are engaged, and 
such are the simple principles which should guide it. It is a 
labor of humanity for the children of the poor, for — 

" Sagged children — with bare feet, 

Whom the angels in white raiment 
Know the names of, to repeat, 

When they come on you for payment. 

" Kagged children, hungry-eyed, 
Huddled up out of the coldness 
On your doorsteps, side by side, 
Till the servant damns their boldness. 

" In the alleys, in the squares, 
Begging, lying little rebels ; 
In the noisy thoroughfares, 

Struggling on with piteous trebles. 

•' Patient children, think what pain 

Makes a young child patient, ponder ! 



" Wicked children, with peaked chins 
And old foreheads, there are many, 
With no pleasures except sins. 

*' Sickly children, that whine low 

To themselves and not their mothers, 
From mere habit— never so, 
Hoping help or care from others. 

" Can we bear 

The sweet looks of our own children— 

*' While those others, lean and small, 
Scurf and mildew of the city, 
Spot our streets — convict us all, 
Till we take them into pity. 

*' If no better can be done, 

Let us do but this— endeavor 
That the Sun, behind the sun, 

Shine upon them while they shiver. 



KB 101 x ^ 



19 

•' On the dismal (city) flags, 

Through the cruel social juggle, 
Put a thought beneath their rags 
To ennoble the heart's struggle. 



* * '' : - " not so much 
Are we asked for — 

" Only a place in Ragged Schools, 

Where the outcasts may to-morrow 
Learn, by gentle words and rules, 
Just the uses of their sorrow." 



APPENDIX. 



INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 

Cottage Place School 204 Bleecker street. 

East River " 206 East 40th street. 

Hudson River " 350 West 27th street. 

1st Ward " 50 Trinity place. 

5th Ward " 141 Hudson street. 

8th Ward " 185 Spring street. 

13th Ward 327 Rivington street. 

14th Ward " 116 Elizabeth street 

16th Ward " 211 West 18tli street. 

Avenue B " 607 East 14th street. 

German " 272 Second street. 

11th Ward Boys' " 709 East 11th street. 

•Girls' " 120 West 16th street. 

Italian " 110 Centre street. 

Graham " 54th st. and 11th ave. 

Cornell " 932 Third avenue. 

Lorimer " 52d st., near 11th ave. 

Park " 68th st., near Broadway. 

Phelps " 337 East 35th street. 

NIGHT SCHOOLS. 

Rivington Street . 327 Rivington street. 

News Boys' 49 Park place. 

Eleventh Street 709 East lltli street. 

Park 69th st. and Broadway. 

German 272 Second street. 

Italian 110 Centre street. 

Sixteenth Ward 211 West 18th street. 



* a>^ : 








<0 











% ""' <V s.. '<^ 








♦ jaW/v,- ^ a^ • 





1 > *£v « 








^ 



°°^ * eVo ° A 









A 9^ 



^ " n ^ °* 

o V 






4^ 



% " .<* «•• V 




,*' 




^ 










^ h Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
» iX^'^U Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 

A/ Treatment Date: Sept. 2003 



4 °^ 




j?^ -: 




PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 
p * ."xr ~r , w: iiiwwn v 



. 



r 



* - _ o ° 
























>!* ** *< 



4? •% 
aO •!*•- ^ 





mm 




WW 



